2009 Books
Explore the best 2009 books in this curated reading list, featuring gripping fiction by Ken Follett and Eoin Colfer, plus unforgettable true crime from Jon Krakauer and iconic series like Twilight and A Series of Unfortunate Events.
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World Without End
by Ken Follett
#1 New York Times Bestseller In 1989, Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in twelfth-century England centered on the building of a cathedral and many of the hundreds of lives it affected. World Without End is its equally irresistible sequel—set two hundred years after The Pillars of the Earth and three hundred years after the Kingsbridge prequel, The Evening and the Morning. World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas—about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race—the Black Death. Three years in the writing and nearly eighteen years since its predecessor, World Without End is a "well-researched, beautifully detailed portrait of the late Middle Ages" (The Washington Post) that once again shows that Ken Follett is a masterful author writing at the top of his craft.
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World War Z
by Max Brooks
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies.”—Entertainment Weekly We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic. The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE “Will spook you for real.”—The New York Times Book Review “Possesses more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles. Think Mad Max meets The Hot Zone. . . . It’s Apocalypse Now, pandemic-style. Creepy but fascinating.”—USA Today “Will grab you as tightly as a dead man’s fist. A.”—Entertainment Weekly, EW Pick “Probably the most topical and literate scare since Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds radio broadcast . . . This is action-packed social-political satire with a global view.”—Dallas Morning News
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Under the Banner of Heaven
by Jon Krakauer
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.
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And Another Thing...
by Eoin Colfer
Released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the bestselling works "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "Artemis Fowl, And Another Thing . . ." continues the popular series started by the late Douglas Adams.
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Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
by McPherson, James M.
No summary available.
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Artemis Fowl The Eternity Code
by Eoin Colfer
Book Three-Now available in trade paperback Artemis Fowl is going straight-as soon as he pulls off the most brilliant criminal feat of his career . . . but his plan goes awry, leaving his loyal bodyguard, Butler, mortally injured. Artemis's only hope of saving his friend is to employ fairy magic; so once again he must contact his old rival, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon fairy police. It is going to take a miracle to save Butler, and Artemis's luck may have just run out. . . . "Readers will burn the midnight oil to the finish." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Artemis Fowl The Arctic Incident
by Eoin Colfer
Artemis is at boarding school in Ireland when he suddenly receives an urgent video-email from Russia. In it is a plea from a man who has been kidnapped by the Russian Mafiya: his father. As Artemis rushes to the rescue, he is stopped by captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon fairy police. But this time, instead of battling the fairies, he is going to have to join forces with them if he wants to save one of the few people in the world he loves.
